[USATODAY] Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore who guided its development into a modern, stable nation as well as one of the world's richest, has died, the government announced.
Lee, 91, had been hospitalized since Feb. 5 for pneumonia and recently had been on life support. He "passed away peacefully'' early Monday, the prime minister's office said.
Lee led Singapore from 1959 to 1990 and remained a member of parliament after leaving the office of prime minister. His son, Lee Hsien Loong, is Singapore's third and current prime minster.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Perhaps the most important person of our lifetimes.
A quotation that stuck with me was.
At independence, a minister asked about the housing situation said,
"We have a shortage of hovels."
An example of what a government prepared to deal with real issues, without pandering, can achieve.
[Telegraph] A team of Argentine archaeologists investigating a series of ruins in the jungle, close to the border with Paraguay, believe they have discovered a secret Nazi lair.
The cluster of stone structures, now covered by thick vines and accessible only when using a machete to cut through the undergrowth, contain stashes of German coins from the late 1930s, fragments of "Made in Germany" porcelain, and Nazi symbols on the walls.
"We can find no other explanation as to why anyone would build these structures, at such great effort and expense, in a site which at that time was totally inaccessible, away from the local community, with material which is not typical of the regional architecture," said Daniel Schavelzon, leader of the team.
Mr Schavelzon, from the University of Buenos Aires, spent months exploring the site in the Teyu Cuare provincial park, in the Misiones region of northern Argentina. Local legend told that a house in the forest belonged to Martin Bormann -- Hitler's right-hand-man, who took his own life in May 1945 -- but Mr Schavelzon said there was no evidence to support what he called "an urban myth".
[Hot Air] The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a new Republican-backed law in Wisconsin that requires voters to present photo identification when they cast ballots.
The court declined to hear an appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law. ...
A federal judge blocked the state's voter ID law in March 2012 soon after it took effect and entered a permanent injunction in April, finding the measure would deter or prevent a substantial number of voters who lack photo identification from casting ballots, and place an unnecessary burden on the poor and minorities.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the decision and subsequently ruled in October that the law was constitutional. Wisconsin's Supreme Court upheld the voter ID law in a separate ruling. This is obviously a very significant ruling.
#1
The fact that supposedly impartial judges can't seem to agree on many laws makes one wonder how impartial they really are. Do you suppose some of them have an agenda? Ya think?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/23/2015 13:19 Comments ||
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#2
Thing is this is a repeat of the upholding of the Indiana voter ID ruling. Looks like the judge shopping by progressives isn't working.
[Dhaka Tribune] A Dhaka court has summoned BNP Chairperson the loathesome Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... , her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters to appear before the court on April 12 in connection with Dandy Dyeing loan default case.
Judge (acting) Ruksana Parvin Happy of Dhaka Artha Rin Adalat 1 (money loan court) passed the order on Sunday afternoon following a summon petition filed by Sonali Bank lawyer Hosne Ara Begum.
The court also fixed April 12 for framing issue and hearing of the case.
On March 16, the BNP chief along with her daughter-in-law Sharmila Rahman and granddaughters -- Jahiya Rahman and Jafiya Rahman were made defendants in the case filed against the directors of Dandy Dyeing Ltd for defaulting on a loan of Tk45.49 crore.
Following Koko's death in Malaysia on January 24, Sonali Bank's Senior Executive Officer Nazrul Islam filed the petition before the court on March 8 as per order 22 and rule 4 of Code of Civil Procedure (CPC).
The other defendants in the case are Dandy Dyeing Directors Tarique Rahman ...the elder son of former President of Bangladesh Ziaur Rahman Bir Uttam, and Khaleda Zia, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh. He is the Senior Vice Chairperson of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). His nickname is Pino. There are allegations that Pino took a rakeoff from every foreign investment into the country while Mom was in office... -- Khaleda's eldest son; Giasuddin Al Mamun and his wife Shahina Begum; Nasrin Iskander -- wife of Khaleda's brother late Sayeed Iskander -- and their sons Shams Iskander and Shafin Iskander and daughter Sumaiya Iskander; Gazi Galib Abdus Sattar, Shamsun Nahar and Masud Hassan.
According to the case statement, the defendants on February 24, 1993, applied to Sonali Bank for a Tk13.14 crore loan in favour of Dandy Dyeing. On May 9, the same year, the bank approved the loan.
The governing body of the bank on October 16, 2001 waived the loan interests following an application by the defendants, and later the loan was rescheduled.
On October 2, 2012, Sonali Bank filed the case as the defendants failed to repay the loan, though the bank issued a final notice on February 28, 2010, asking them to repay the loan.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2015 00:00 ||
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[Breitbart London] The crew of a Scottish fishing boat had a lucky escape this week when their vessel narrowly avoided being dragged beneath the waves by an unidentified object caught in their net. The captain of the boat has insisted that the mystery object was a Russian submarine, as there were no British or Nato vessels in the area.
Angus Mcleod and his crew were fishing aboard the Aquarius, a 41 year old wooden vessel on Tuesday. They were about ten miles east of the Butt of Lewis in waters 360 feet deep when something became entangled in one of the ships two trawling nets, pulling it to the fore, the Telegraph has reported.
#2
As a backgrounder: local fishing boats that worked near the travel lanes around Holy Loch and Faslane (Scotland) during the cold war would have an 'axeman' stationed on the trawl deck, to cut the line if it suddenly snapped taunt, the theory being they'd snagged a nuke sub going the other way.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/23/2015 7:41 Comments ||
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#3
Not at all impossible - IIRC USS Houston killed a fishing boat that way many years ago.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/23/2015 10:36 Comments ||
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#4
"we're gonna need a bigger boat"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2015 11:17 Comments ||
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[AnNahar] Russia said it was ending military drills Saturday that saw over 80,000 troops mobilised from the Pacific to the Black Sea in a show of force amid tensions with the West.
A senior military official said that the nationwide exercises -- that included sending nuclear bombers to Crimea and ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad in the heart of Europe -- would end on Saturday afternoon.
President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... gave the order for them to start on Monday.
"Troops have been given the order to return to their permanent bases," Lieutenant general Andrei Kartapolov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The massive military exercises -- some of the biggest by Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- have givem leaders across Eastern Europe the jitters.
Moscow and the West are locked in a bitter showdown over the crisis in Ukraine that has pushed relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Kiev and its allies accuse the Kremlin of pouring arms and troops across its border to spearhead a bloody pro-Russian rebellion, allegations that Moscow denies.
NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... members including the United States and Germany have beefed up exercises with the alliance's eastern nations, such as Poland and Lithuania, in a bid to reassure allies anxious over a bullish Russia.
[AnNahar] Representatives of about a dozen far-right groups from across Europe gathered in Russia Sunday for a pro-Kremlin conference as concern swirls over Moscow's alleged attempts to court extremists on the continent.
About 150 members of Russian nationalist and right-wing European parties -- including Greece's Golden Dawn and Germany's National Democratic Party -- met in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg to berate the West for its stance on the Ukraine conflict and to promote "traditional values."
Far-rights groups across Europe have become vocal supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... over his handling of the Ukraine crisis, prompting allegations they have reached a Faustian bargain to help burnish the Kremlin's battered image.
The growing ties come despite Moscow's claims it is aiming to counter what it sees as "fascism ...a political system developed in Italy symbolized by the Roman fasces -- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about... " in Ukraine, where pro-Western protesters swept a Kremlin-backed president from power last year.
"We do not support the sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict," Udo Voigt, a member of the European Parliament from Germany's National Democratic Party, said at the conference.
"It is incredible what patience Russia and president Putin have shown in the face of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... 's aggressive policies."
Organizers said the forum was intended to strengthen links with right-wing groups across Europe and help shape a common agenda.
"This meeting is the first foundation stone towards constructing the new world that we are obliged to build," said Fyodor Birukov, from the pro-Kremlin Rodina party that organized the event.
"I see this forum as a way pushing the fight back against liberalism and what we call modernism, the destruction of traditional values including Christianity throughout the modern world," said Nick Griffin, former head of the British National Party.
"Russia is about tradition and Christianity and it's very important that traditionalists from Russia, Europe and America get together to present our ideas more effectively to the general public."
Sunday's meeting sparked condemnation from the liberal opposition in Russia's former imperial capital, with several demonstrators outside the hotel venue holding placards reading "no to Nazis."
"It is scandalous for Russia to welcome the heirs of Mussolini and Hitler," protester Natalia Gerasimova, 57, told Agence La Belle France-Presse.
Russia is gearing up for major celebrations in May to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Fringe far-right groups from around Europe have sent observers to monitor votes by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that sought to legitimize their rule despite widespread condemnation from Kiev and the West.
#1
The growing ties come despite Moscow's claims it is aiming to counter what it sees as "fascism" in Ukraine Counter facism and replace it with something equally bad or worse?
#2
Fascism has lost all meaning as have so many words.
Russia is as much fascist as Mussolini's Italy. These, so called, right wing groups fit right in while the establishment groups are nothing but "kinder, gentler" fascists.
It's all about power and control regardless of the labels they choose to use.
[Telegraph] Russia has gone on the offensive in the Baltic, warning Denmark that if it joins Nato's missile defence shield, its navy will be a legitimate target for a Russian nuclear attack.
I think they already knew that...
"I don't think that Danes fully understand the consequence if Denmark joins the American-led missile defence shield. If they do, then Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles," said Mikhail Vanin, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Reset indeed.
Moscow opposes the system, arguing that it could reduce the effectiveness of its own nuclear arsenal, leading to a new Cold War-style arms race. 'Reduce' it's ability to nuke Denmark ?
The Republicans have a real opportunity to connect with voters and win big in 2016. But to do so, they'll have to get over their traditional love for Big Business. Will they be smart enough to do that? The prospects don't look especially bright.
But the fact is that many big businesses are unpopular with the public, aligned with the Democrats, and wide open for attack. And after eight years of the Obama administration's naked cronyism and support of Wall Street even as the middle class has suffered, the opportunities are there.
#1
Being concerned about 'Big Business', in its' present form, does not necessarily mean one is down on the free enterprise system.
Maybe government interference has corrupted free interprise.
"Economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise." -- C. William Brownfield
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/23/2015 7:51 Comments ||
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#2
Big business as represented by Wall Street has many lefties among its ranks. The fact that so much of Main Street got pilloried when the market collapsed due in part to Democrat policies on sub-prime loans and sweetheart deals with Wall Street banks. It shouldn't be too hard to connect those dots.
We are moving farther and farther away from free-enterprise every day. And have been ever since the old timey "capitalists" discovered the efficacy and pleasure of rent seeking.
Our economy is suffering from the pollution of toxic ideology and greed. Part fascist, part socialist part plutocracy and part self-serving political graft & corruption. Any new business is quickly poisoned or quickly dies.
#4
Would work for actual Republicans, but not Tame Republicans. The latter actually support most of the Left's agenda. They won't fight the Left, only dissenters within their ranks.
#5
"Tame Republicans" - Liberals who left the Socialist Party and try to make a living portraying themselves as 'middle of the road' pols. They forgot that 'getting along' with the Socialist is why the Socialist took over their old party.
[DAWN] LAHORE: Three robbers were killed while attempting to loot jewellery at a shop in Baghbanpura, police said on Saturday.
Four gunnies forced their entry into a jewellery shop at Sirajpura market but the owners and employees opened fire on them which resulted in an exchange of fire. Three of the robbers were killed while two jewellers were maimed.
Police took the bodies into their custody and shifted them to the morgue for an appointment with Dr. Quincy after registering a robbery case.
Police said jewellers Shoaib and Waqas were shifted to the Mayo Hospital where Shoaib's condition was stated to be critical.
Baghbanpura SHO Nasrullah said two of the robbers were identified as Ramzan of Lyari ...one of the eighteen constituent towns of the city of Karachi. It is the smallest town by area in the city but also the most densely populated. Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads. It is a stronghold of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Ubiquitous gang activity and a thriving narcotics industry make Lyari one of the most disturbed places in Karachi, which is really saying a lot.... and Iftikhar of Sahiwal. Efforts were being made to identify others, he said, adding that police seized three pistols from the shop.
DSP Mian Muhammad Khalid told Dawn that a jeweller's son, Hamza, alerted the market traders after seeing four gunnies standing in front of their shop. He said when the robbers tried to enter the shop, the owner resisted and in an exchange of fire, three gunnies were killed and the fourth managed to escape.
A number of people gathered there and protested against the robbery and street crime incidents in their area.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... police have told the Supreme Court that they have reconstituted a joint investigation team (JIT) to carry out a fresh probe into lynching of a Christian couple by a mob in Kot Radha Kishan on Nov 4 last year.
DIG (inspections and vigilance) Akhtar Umer Hayat Lalika now headed the JIT which was earlier led by the SP (investigations) for Kasur, said a report submitted to the court on behalf of Punjab IG Mushtaq Sukhaira.
The JIT was reconstituted in view of the observations of the court at the last hearing of the case on March 9, when it expressed shock over the lax attitude of police and indicated that it might order a judicial inquiry to probe into police failure to prevent the couple from being burned to death in a kiln over blasphemy allegations.
The court took up the case after taking suo motu ...a legal term, from the Latin. Roughly translated it means I saw what you did, you bastard... notice of the tragic incident.
The police report said the new head of the JIT had been asked to ensure good quality investigations into the incident.
It said that 25 suspects had been incarcerated Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! in addition to the earlier 76, bringing the total number of those arrested in the case to 101. Key witnesses' statements under Section 164 of CrPC were recorded before Kasur Magistrate Syed Muhammad Ilyas on March 19. The loudspeakers used for inciting the people to attack the couple had been seized and made part of the case record.
According to the report, the JIT is minutely examining the role of ASI Abdul Rasheed in the tragedy. A fact-finding committee headed by the AIG of investigation branch has concluded that the ASI knew that a crisis was brewing a day before the ugly incident happened.
But he kept quiet and did not bother to inform his seniors -- including the DPO, the SDPO and the SHO concerned -- who could have taken action to prevent the situation from taking an ugly turn.
The ASI's silence precluded any preventive and security measures by police, the report said.
Similarly, Sub-Inspector Mohammad Ali, who was in charge of the factory area check-post of Kot Radha Kishan cop shoppe, and Constables Mohammad Saleem, Ahmed Din and Hakim Ali have been held responsible for not acting in a manner befitting a police officer. All of them were armed and could have at least had gun sex to ward off the mob. The report said that their inaction was not condonable.
As a consequence, ASI Rasheed was suspended and the remaining coppers were sent to the police lines, it added.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] ISLAMABAD: On Friday, students at the International Islamic University (IIUI) Islamabad offered prayers outside the locked doors of a mosque, recently shut down by the university administration.
The administration recently closed down the decades old mosque aligned with the Barelvi school of thought. They claimed the decision had been made because of security concerns.
Students praying outside the closed mosque expressed resentment against the university's decision.
At the university's main mosque, where a large number of students offer Friday prayers, the sermon is only delivered in Arabic.
For the last seven years, students who associate themselves with the Barelvi school and others who wish to listen to the Friday sermon in Urdu, had been offering Friday prayers at another mosque located near the university entrance.
The mosque had originally been built by locals of the area, several decades ago.
In 2000, local people moved from the area after receiving compensation for their land from the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the mosque was abandoned.
Students associated with the Barelvi school renovated this mosque in 2008 and began offering prayers here.
The IIUI Security Team recently shut down the mosque, citing security as the reason. However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... the students took the matter to court. According to them, the court set March 24 as the date for the next hearing and allowed them to pray at the mosque, meanwhile. For several weeks, the students have been praying outside the locked doors of the mosque.
"Our mosque is safer than the main mosque but has been shut in the name of security," said a student member of Anjuman Tuleba Islam (ATI), the student wing of the Barelvi school.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2015 00:00 ||
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People familiar with the technology [Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Suite] say it can be altered to gather identifying information from individual computers and has been used to aid the FSB in investigations.
Kaspersky Lab's ties dramatically increased after two waves of executive departures, say four of the former insiders. The first came in 2012, after Kaspersky scotched an IPO partnership with Greenwich (Conn.) investment firm General Atlantic. Afterward, Chief Business Officer Garry Kondakov circulated an internal e-mail saying that from then on, the company's highest positions would be held only by Russians
High-level managers have left or been fired, their jobs often filled by people with ties to Russia's military or intelligence services. Some of these people actively aid investigations by the FSB, the KGB's successor, using data from some of the 400 million customers who rely on Kaspersky Lab's software, say six current and former employees who declined to discuss the matter publicly because they feared reprisals.
The bottom line: Popular security-software maker Kaspersky Lab has close ties to Russian military and intelligence officials. I'd recommend using something else. Apparently they do not investigate much Russian based malware or virus tech if it is part of the FSB "sponsored" stuff
#2
Just catching on to that? The big clue was the press releases on NSA bug plants that had an extensive interview with Snowden, and then a Kapersky guy who just happened to be handy pipes in.
They've been suspect for a long time; now it's overt.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/23/2015 7:28 Comments ||
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#3
ed in Texas. Could you please repost in Standard US English? There are people outside your county who have no idea what "handy pipes" means.
#4
just happened to be handy = just happened to be nearby (i.e. "at hand").
Pipes in = to insert something into the conversation. This is probably an old shipping term when they used pipes to communicate between different sections of the ship.
#8
CF - the last time I used software from Comcast (Norton something or other), it conflicted w/ my tax software. I uninstalled it and got an unrecoverable BSOD, so I had to rebuild my machine in the middle of tax season.
That, and I haven't used Norton since they were folded into Symantec. I think Norton's been shit software since that move.
#9
For the last three years Kaspersky has been reporting everything used against Iran's nuclear program as if it's part of a broad-spectrum surveillance attempt against regular users. Snowden's half-truth 'revelations' are designed to reinforce this idea.
[AnNahar] Nazar Sarani's village in southeast Iran was once an island. It is now a desert, a casualty of the country's worsening water crisis.
"We live in the dust," said the 54-year-old cattle herder of his home in the once exceptional biosphere of Lake Hamoun, a wetland of varied flora and fauna, which is now nothing but sand-baked earth.
Climate change, with less rainfall each year,
...except for those years when there is more...
...also known as 'flooding'; see Pakistan for details...
is blamed, but so too is human error and government mismanagement.
There's also Allah's will, guys. What if he just isn't that into you?
Iran's reservoirs are only 40 percent full according to official figures, and nine cities including the capital Tehran are threatened with water restrictions after dry winters. Did you ever notice how deserts seem to follow the Religion of Peace every place it infects?
The situation is more critical in Sistan-Balochistan, the most dangerous area in Iran, where a Sunni minority is centred in towns and villages that border Pakistain and Afghanistan.
Only 15 years ago, Hamoun was the seventh largest wetland in the world, straddling 4,000 square kilometres (1,600 square miles) between Iran and Afghanistan, with water rolling in from the latter's Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... river.
But with dams since built in Afghanistan as well as other blocked pathways holding back the source of Hamoun's diversity, the local economy has collapsed.
Some 3,000 families whose lifeline was fishing have left and young people head to other provinces for work.
- People are wasting water -
A study in 2013 by the World Resources Institute ranked Iran as the world's 24th most water-stressed nation, with public consumption around twice the world average.
Government subsidies on water do nothing to encourage efficiency, and public education messages on television and radio are ignored.
Agricultural use -- for water-heavy crops such as rice and corn -- is thought to eat up nearly 90 percent of national supply, with experts saying irrigation is poorly managed, resulting in high wastage.
For those whose taps are running dry, the result is hardship and human turmoil: drug use is rising and sandstorms are causing respiratory illnesses.
Sarani's village, Sikhsar, where wooden boats sit on hard mud that was once the waterfront, is a place that mother earth has transformed.
The area once had several villages, 3,000 cows, lakes and birds.
Sarani's own herd used to number 100. Now down to just 10 cows, his depleted milk sales are not enough to feed the family or educate four children.
Most local youths have headed to the cities of Yazd, Semnan and Tehran to work as construction labourers.
The water problem is everywhere. Lake Urmia, a near 145-kilometre-long (90-mile), 48-kilometre wide salt lake near Iran's northwest border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , is almost empty.
And in the city of Isfahan, an ancient jewel long dubbed "half the world" for its beautiful palaces, boulevards, bridges and mosques, the Zayanderud river that runs through it is often bone dry.
- Region warmer and drier -
Much like Sarani, Mohammad Bazi, a fellow shepherd in Hamoun, bemoans what he says is government inaction in Tehran, arguing that Afghanistan must be persuaded to reopen the valves.
With the land so parched, he often has to walk his cattle hundreds of kilometres to find suitable grazing. The lack of water has also caused milk quality to decline and, struggling to survive, he has slaughtered some of his cows.
Massoumeh Ebtekar, Iran's vice president responsible for the environment, has said efforts are being made to protect Iran's water rights that will see it flow back across the border.
"We need local, regional, and international cooperation," she added.
The government is also working with the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... , but the challenges seem immense.
"The whole region is becoming warmer and drier," said Gary Lewis, head of the U.N. Development Program in Iran, calling for the Iranian and Afghan governments at the highest level to tackle it.
"The situation is unsustainable," he added, noting climate change but naming water mismanagement as the main problem.
While Afghanistan is often blamed for the water shortage, its ambassador to Tehran, Nassir Ahmad-Nour, said it was wrong to view a country at war since 1979 as a culprit.
"The situation is even worse on our side of the border," he added.
#2
Major seas + lakes across Eurasia are "mysteriously" suddenly drying up, + no one is seemingly even trying to question CHINA on its geologic studies, etc, behind its Three Gorges + even bigger post-Three Gorges future massive water projects.
#4
So let's just say it is climate change that's behind all this. Every cloud has a silver lining!
Dallas' climate-changed-drought seems to be changing again, with rainfall more than 2" over normal so far this year, and the reservoirs filling up again.
Hey! Maybe it's the man-made reservoirs that are the problem? [snicker]
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/23/2015 7:40 Comments ||
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#5
Al-Cadillac Desert
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/23/2015 10:29 Comments ||
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#6
Did you ever notice how deserts seem to follow the Religion of Peace every place it infects?
Actaullay I ahve read that in former Yugoslavia there was a distinct pattern of the territory of Muslm villages being dsitinctly drier than the ones of nearby Catholic or Orthodos vilalges.
Two possible reasons: 1) Because islam sets a people of nomadic herders, shhep and camel hers, as an example. Also pig herders, who require woods, didn't embrace Islam o changed jobs.
2) Because sheep herders were more likely than peasants to embrace a religion that requires mobile, mounted people for djihad.
#8
IIUC, CHINA' views GWCC in seeming opposite to IRAN - China fears any intensifying GWCC will cause THREE GORGES + FOLLOW-ON PROJECTS TO OVERFLOW, NOT DRY UP as the former is designed to "channel" regional + trans-regional water flows to it, not away from it.
China repor takes its water woes seriously, in peace or war, so much so that Three Gorges per se + approaches are heavily defended by the PLA.
h/t Instapundit
[AnnAlthouse] "Part of the shared legacy of high school is bemused stories about people who were treated as demigods at seventeen and never recovered. A doctor I hang out with tells me that former classmates who were more socially successful in high school than he was seem baffled that he, a quiet youth who made little impression, could be more professionally successful, as though the qualities that made them popular should have effortlessly floated them through life. It's easy to laugh, but there is a real human cost... I've learned from doctors that you don't have to have a cure before you make a diagnosis. Talk of abolishing high school is just my way of wondering whether so many teenagers have to suffer so much. How much of that suffering is built into a system that is, however ubiquitous, not inevitable? 'Every time I drive past a high school, I can feel the oppression. I can feel all those trapped souls who just want to be outside,' a woman recalling her own experience wrote to me recently. 'I always say aloud, "You poor souls."' " But were are we supposed to warehouse the little monsters---to stop them from running wild through the streets? Very interesting dialogue in the comments section on 'free stuff.'
#2
If you have to put a security fence around a school so that it looks like some kind of a prison it's a good bet there are a good many students in there who wish they were somewhere else. Then, after twelve years of sitting in various types of classes they are 17 or 18 years old and qualified to do absolutely nothing. For the ones who aren't going on to college they've just been cheated out of some of the best years of their lives. The ones who go to college will find the first two years are little more than a rehash of what they learned in high school. Such a waste.
[CA.NEWS.YAHOO] Starbucks Corp head Howard Schultz told employees on Sunday they will no longer be encouraged to write "Race Together" on drinks cups, but the company's effort to promote discussion of racial issues "is far from over".
They're promoting it everywhere except on their corporate board, which is about as white as the MSNBC prime time anchor lineup...
The world's biggest coffee chain kicked off a U.S. race relations campaign last week when it published full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers with the words "Shall We Overcome?" at centre page and "RaceTogether" and the Starbucks logo near the bottom. I've just 'Overcome' the need to buy a cup of Starbucks. Funny how it happened.
Employees behind the counter were also given the option of writing "Race Together" on customers' cups. Hey Lenny, I see you're not writing anything on your cups....something wrong ?
The campaign was met with skepticism on social media, with many complaining the company was overstepping it boundaries with a campaign on sensitive cultural topics that had no place in the coffee shop's lines. "They got those 'We are all responsible, well-intentioned blues!'"
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
The leftists of the Democratic Party — the party of slavery; the party of the Ku Klux Klan; the party of Jim Crow; the party of segregation; the party of a welfare state that destroyed the black family in ways the most evil slaver could only dream of; the party of abortion, which snuffs out more black lives than heart attacks and cancer combined — call us racist when we oppose them. - Andrew Klavan
Remember - group punishment is wrong and broad brushing whole groups of people for the acts of a few is wrong unless the Left does it to assuage it's own guilt. Then you're stuck on the bus with them. This has never been about a 'conversation'. It's about making people agree with them regardless of the truth.
#3
From Wik: In 1998, Schultz was awarded the "Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award" from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for "playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel".
Lifelong democrat and pandering activist, unless I've missed my guess.
#5
In 1998, Schultz was awarded the "Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award" from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for "playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel".
A reward for not bringing Starbucks to Israel, ou rooinek.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/23/2015 14:34 Comments ||
Top||
#12
This whole episode reminds me of the Hollywood celebrities who pontificate on political and social issues. Maybe they think it's cool, hip and with it. They may even flatter themselves into believing it's their responsibility. I'm guessing about half of the country agrees with them and half get pissed off enough to never watch another one of their movies. I can't imagine ever going to see a Sean Penn movie and Schultz doesn't seem to have helped his business much.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
[Telegraph] Russia has gone on the offensive in the Baltic, warning Denmark that if it joins Nato's missile defence shield, its navy will be a legitimate target for a Russian nuclear attack.
enough to do that? The prospects don't look especially bright.
People familiar with the technology [Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Suite] say it can be altered to gather identifying information from individual computers and has been used to aid the FSB in investigations.
